A Do-It-Yourself Guitar for Under $100? Here’s What It Sounds Like

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If you’ve ever considered building a guitar yourself, Gear4Music has an inexpensive way for you to give it a go.

The company sells a range of DIY electric guitar kits from its website, with prices ranging from roughly $90 to $125. Both six- and 12-string models are available and are offered in a range of popular body shapes.

One happy buyer recently shared a video of his guitar online. Karl Golden purchased the kit for the Knoxville, which features a Tele-style ash body, a bolt-on maple neck with maple fingerboard and 22 frets, a pair of single-coil pickups, a three-way pickup selector, single volume and tone knobs, die-cast chrome tuners and chrome hardware.

While Golden notes that “it is in no way an amazing instrument,” he says “it is a great idea for any creative musicians who want to build their own instrument. You can even take it further by crafting the headstock or painting the guitar, or even adding your own pickups, tuning pegs, etc!”

You can see Golden and his dad, Barry, assemble the guitar and demo it in the video below.

Christopher Scapelliti
Christopher Scapelliti

Christopher Scapelliti is editor-in-chief of Guitar Player magazine, the world’s longest-running guitar magazine, founded in 1967. In his extensive career, he has authored in-depth interviews with such guitarists as Pete Townshend, Slash, Billy Corgan, Jack White, Elvis Costello and Todd Rundgren, and audio professionals including Beatles engineers Geoff Emerick and Ken Scott. He is the co-author of Guitar Aficionado: The Collections: The Most Famous, Rare, and Valuable Guitars in the World, a founding editor of Guitar Aficionado magazine, and a former editor with Guitar World, Guitar for the Practicing Musician and Maximum Guitar. Apart from guitars, he maintains a collection of more than 30 vintage analog synthesizers.